Monthly Archives: November 2014

Europol on Friday announced that a team of agents from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Eurojust have taken down more than 400 cybercrime services accessible via the Tor browser.

They include the dark market Silk Road 2.0. Its operator, San Francisco resident Blake Benthall, was arrested, along with six Britons.

Europol coordinated the action, which was dubbed "Operation Onymous."

"Almost all crime now has an international nexus -- and especially within HSI, we have significant dependency on other partners in law enforcement here and in other countries," Gary Hartwig, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Chicago, told the E-Commerce Times.

In all, the cops arrested 17 vendors and administrators running the cybercrime sites. Officials seized about US$1 million worth of bitcoins, along with an estimated $225,000 worth of cash, gold, silver and drugs.

Forty law enforcement agents reportedly collaborated for six months on the investigation before the crackdown. Among the sites taken down: Cloud Nine, Hydra, BlueSky, Outlaw Market and Alpaca.

More arrests are expected.

"While I would like to think our enforcement actions this week shut down [the bad guys], Dark Net or Silk Road are such significantly complex criminal structures that we're going to have to continue to monitor things," Hartwig said.

Onymous "is a great example of how 20th century law enforcement tactics and undercover operations are still viable in the 21st century, despite drastic changes to the criminal landscape," Craig Young, a security researcher at Tripwire, told the E-Commerce Times.

Cloud9 already is looking for a new host, according to a post by "missy76," who seems to be one of the site's admins.

Read more:
The Law Scores a Victory Against Dark Net Denizens